Our Semester School is a 15-week residential high school term, open to junior, senior, and gap year students, in the beautiful Cascade Mountains. If you are interested in sending your student to our program, please email info@cascademountainschool.org to be added to our mailing list. We will begin accepting applications for our Fall 2016 program in January, 2016.
The CMS Semester School is privately accredited through AdvancED.
The CMS Semester School is a 15-week residential, private accredited academic term running August 29 - December 16, 2016 dedicated to:
- Developing the whole person through hands on work, participating in community and supporting reflection and contemplation to nurture tomorrow’s leaders,
- Fostering a sense of place through immersion in farm and wilderness leading to an appreciation for the complexity and interdependence of the natural world that will hold for a lifetime,
- Engaging students in inspiring, innovative learning experiences in systems thinking, scientific inquiry and sustainability studies creating systems leaders equipped to solve the complex problems of their generation.
- Creating a diverse community of people and ideas, our curriculum is co-developed with collaborators in the native community, members of academia, and Gorge residents from many different viewpoints and fields of study. Not every student will be alike, we hold a deep commitment to a diversity of students population, of ideas, and a diversity of learning methods .
- Empowering students with the knowledge and skills to become innovators and change makers
Cascade Mountain Semester School Overview
The CMS Semester School is based in the beautiful Columbia Gorge region of Oregon & Washington, at the intersection of the Columbia River and the Cascade Mountain Range, east of Portland. Students and staff will explore the ecological and human communities of the gorge, and their many connected dimensions~ wilderness, agriculture, natural resource and industry, transportation, energy, and native communities. We will use this unique ecosystem to explore what resilience means in our changing world.
In systems thinking terms, resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and re-organize while undergoing change, often resulting in more diversity, flexibility, and creativity in the system. Resilience is the ‘lens’ through which we will view the many changes happening in this world~ at the climate and ecosystem level, as well as culturally and economically, as well as our own personal resilience and character.
Central to our study of resilience, will be the story of Salmon, a key indicator species of ecological health and a cherished cultural, and economic element of the Pacific Northwest. Salmon is a thread weaving through all course subjects in the CMS curriculum in order to develop a deep understanding of the long- term interconnected relationship people have with place. Meeting in the fall, we will follow the journey of Salmon as they arrive back to the Pacific Northwest. We will explore the reciprocal way that the landscape forms the people and traditions of a place, and in turn, how people and traditions shape the landscape.
Community, Residential Life, and Our Campus:
Students live, play, study, and work together in the quiet valley of Trout Lake, Washington, a quiet agricultural town of 900 people situated at the base of Mt. Adams. Our campus is the Mt. Adams Institute, a camp facility on US Forest Service land behind the Mt. Adams Ranger District at the base of Mt. Adams, a 12,000 foot volcano. Students take English, History, Science, Math, and Art classes augmented by weekend Wilderness and Leadership and Sustainable Agriculture seminars. Students live with and are supervised on-site by resident assistants and free time is structured with weekend seminars, as well as time for rest and community engagement.
Students will participate in all aspects of residential life working in the garden, chopping firewood, and helping with food and community chores all opportunities for rich lifetime learning.
Supervision, and care for the students is one of our utmost priorities. Boys and girls will be housed in separate bunkhouses and cared for by community coordinators. Expectations will be clear and community rules established and upheld.
